After talking to the vivacious Maryann, I began to think about how the online world was embracing poker and called up Sharon Wood at Myelin Studios. They are developing a game for Microsoft's XBox that is being touted by MTV called Stacked. She put me in touch with the crew at XBox to give me the scoop. Yumi Huh is the public relations manager at Xbox and began her gaming career via the Marketing Leadership Research program at Microsoft. Her friendly colleague Lisa Sikora is the lead product manager for marketing in Microsoft's casual games group. Lisa proudly told me that 68% of MSN's gaming audience is women! You can meet Lisa at the Women in Games conference in San Francisco in February. She is on the panel with Ellen Beaman.
What considerations do you think need to be taken into account to design games that are more appealing to women ASIDE from the depiction of female characters as sex objects and victims?
Microsoft is making a real push to provide products and marketing that target women and the casual gamer. Historically, there has not been enough attention paid to marketing to the women’s demographic. These games offer a quick fix that is relaxing , productive, a stress reliever and offers a social aspect to their online play. Stacked is an excellent example of a game that fits this bill. It offers a cool, hip edge to poker and the XBox live technology allows you to play in huge tourneys with large numbers of people.
What sets Stacked aside from other poker games?
Aside from the XBox live technology, the celebrity poker players that are there to help give you tips on the game (Daniel Negreanu, Evelyn Ng etc) as well as the advanced AI. The game also offers custom character creation and tournaments. Their website touts "whether it’s you and a few buds playing a cross-country pick-up game or thousands of players battling it out in a massive multi-table tournament." If you rank high enough in the tournaments you may actually get to play against the real celebrities themselves. And you do NOT play for money.
So the question remains. Can the virtual heroes in Stacked arm me with enough voodoo to go up against Trish across the street and Meliha on the other end of the culdesac? I vote we start playing for Fig Newtons versus cash.
Stacked is being released in February 2006.
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